Early jazz was local entertainment for black audiences, an informal, low-budget, and even somewhat casual art. Small bands, usually of six to eight players, typically featured three melody instruments to do the “swinging” — trumpet, clarinet, and trombone. The rhythm section could include piano, banjo, string bass, or even tuba, along with drums and other percussion.

Early jazz players developed the art of collective improvisation, or “jamming.” They learned to improvise simultaneously, each developing the special resources of his instrument — bright melodic spurts for the trumpet, fast running passages from low register to high for the clarinet, forceful slides for the trombone. They also acquired a sort of sixth sense for fitting in with the other improvisers. The non-imitative polyphony (see page 30) produced this way is the hallmark of early jazz.

The first important center of jazz was New Orleans, home of the greatest early jazzman, Louis Armstrong, who played cornet and trumpet. Armstrong and his colleagues developed wonderfully imaginative and individual performance styles; aficionados can recognize any player after hearing just a few measures of a jazz record. With players of this quality, it is not surprising that solo sections soon became a regular feature in early jazz, along with collective improvisation.

Recording technology was already crucial in the spread of jazz. As popular records in those days were all just three minutes long, the jazz that has survived from that era is all slimmed down into three-minute segments. Originally issued on labels that appealed to black audiences — coldly categorized as “race records” by the music business — Armstrong’s discs of the late 1920s and 1930s not only attracted white listeners but also excited the admiration of a new breed of jazz musicologists and critics.